"Didn't ask," replied Hugo. "I told him to come to you for information. So you can look out. There's something in the wind, I'm sure. I thought you might have heard of it. Thank you for your readiness to enlighten me, Mr. Colquhoun. I've learnt a good deal to-day. Good morning."
"Now what did he mean by that?" said the lawyer, when he was left alone. "It's hard to tell when he's telling the truth and when he's lying just for the pleasure of it, so to speak. As for his priest—I'm not so sure that I believe in his priest. I'll send down to the hotel and inquire."
He sent to every hotel in the place, and from every hotel he received the same answer. They had no foreign visitor, and had had none for the last three weeks. There was apparently not a priest in the place. "It'll just be one of Master Hugo's lies," said Mr. Colquhoun, grimly. "There's a rod in pickle for that young man one of these days, and I should like well to have the applying of it to his shoulders. He's an awful scamp, is Hugo."
There was a triumphant smile upon Hugo's face as he rode away from the lawyer's office. Twice in that day had his generalship been successful, and his success disposed him to think rather meanly of his fellow-creatures' intellects. It was surely very easy, and decidedly pleasant, to outwit one's neighbours! He had made both Brian and Mr. Colquhoun give him information which they would have certainly withheld had they known the object for which it had been asked. He was proud of his own dexterity.
On his arrival at Netherglen he found that Mrs. Luttrell and Angela had gone for a drive. He was glad of it. He wanted a little time to himself in Brian's old room. He had already noticed that an old-fashioned davenport which stood in this room had never been emptied of its contents, and in this davenport he found two or three papers which were of service to him. He took them away to his bed-room, where he practised a certain kind of handwriting for two or three hours with tolerable success. He tried it again after dinner, when everybody was in bed, and he tried it again next day. It was rather a difficult hand to imitate well, but he was not easily discouraged.
"I am afraid, dear aunt, that I must run up to town for a day or two," he said to Mrs. Luttrell that evening, with engaging frankness. "I have business to transact. But I will be back in three or four days at most, if you will permit me."
"Do as you please, Hugo," said Mrs. Luttrell, in her stoniest manner. "I have no wish to impose any kind of trammels upon you."
"Dear Aunt Margaret, the only trammels that you impose are those of love!" said Hugo, in his silkiest undertone.
Angela looked up. For the moment she was puzzled. To her, Hugo's speech sounded insincere. But the glance of the eye that she encountered was so caressing, the curves of his mouth were so sweetly infantine, that she accused herself of harsh judgment, and remembered Hugo's foreign blood and Continental training, which had given him the habit, she supposed, of saying "pretty things." She could not doubt his sincerity when she looked at the peach-like bloom of that oval face, the impenetrable softness of those velvet eyes. Hugo's physical beauty always stood him in good stead.
"You are an affectionate, warm-hearted boy, I believe, Hugo," said Mrs. Luttrell. Then, after a short pause, she added, with no visible link of connection, "I have written instructions to Colquhoun. I expect him here to-morrow."